Michael Malone's List: Public Spheres/National Identity

(2008)

This paper analyses the newly created communication strategy devised by the European Union Commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communication and contrasts the mismatch between theoretical concepts of trans-national communication in the social sciences on the one hand and the problematic nature of the EU's communicative approach relating to the national public spheres on the other.

I argue that while some theorists propagate idealistic-normative expectations rather than empirically based policy recommendations, the Commission has begun to listen to academics and politicians who rightfully call for more transparency and interaction with media outlets on a national level.

Distinguishing the contrasting/conflicting identities within the EU by conceptualizing the various attitudes, meanings, and interpretations of Europe, European integration, and 'European power', and also manifestations of 'Europeanizing' processes, across 'EU'rope.

ABSTRACT: We note the importance of work that captures both the diverse expressions and meanings attributed to Europe, European integration and 'European power' in different places within and beyond the EU, and the variegated manifestations of 'Europeanizing' processes across these different spaces. We also suggest that political-geographic research can add crucial input to reconceptualizing European integration as well as Europeanization as it now unfolds in a time of 'crisis'.

INTRO:
The current European economic crisis has not only prompted an intense political debate on notions of 'European solidarity' and 'European values', but has also drawn attention to significant political, economic and cultural differences in 'EU'rope.

The events of 2011 have in fact highlighted not only the power of EU institutions to transform seemingly domestic economic and political issues into 'all-European' matters, but have also resulted in a wholesale remaking of a distinct 'European' political space, not just within but also vis-a-vis its putative 'outside'.

The crisis has indeed put well into evidence the argument that European integration can be understood as a set of discursive practices that set boundaries for imaginations and articulations of the EU, as well as of its future geopolitical role in Europe and in the wider world. Not surprisingly, one of the most visible geopolitical imaginations of the economic crisis has been premised on a distinction between the irrational, naive, irresponsible and chaotic European South, and a rational and (fiscally) responsible North

Writing in the midst of one of the flash points of the crisis, The Economist (2011: 34) could thus note that '150 years after Italy cast off foreign rule and won independence, the country still needs the vincolo esterno, the "external constraint"', distilling a variety of similar arguments for politico-economic paternalism and the 'defense of [European] monetarist orthodoxy against Mediterranean leniency' 

What is more, and related to the above points, the current condition has also illuminated that Europe means different things in different places, and that the politics of integration evokes different responses, tactics and strategies in different geographical contexts. The crisis has, indeed, given rise to widely different imaginations of 'EU'rope, differentially mobilized by various political groupings, institutions and elite fractions across the continent (Clark and Jones, 2012), highlighting the wide variety of ways in which the influence of the EU and associated 'European values' are interpreted and called up in various parts of the EU, and beyond.

In particular, the complex geographical articulations of the current crisis highlight the need for a spatially sensitive, contextual approach, one able to capture not only the diverse expressions and meanings attributed to 'Europe', European integration and 'European power' in different places (within and beyond the EU27), but also the highly variegated manifestations of 'Europeanizing' processes across these different spaces.

---->Most importantly - and in this sense going beyond existing reviews of work on Europeanization - our aim is not only to provide an assessment of contributions focusing on the 'internal' political geographies of European integration, but also to problematize more widely the sociospatial imaginaries of 'EU'rope as constructed and deployed from both within and outside the EU. <----

Chapters:

6. European Model of the Public Sphere: Towards a Networked Governance Model

10. Defending Communicative Spaces: The Remits and Limits of the European Parliament

11. Supranational Regulation: EU Competition Directorate & the European A/V Marketplace

QUESTION--
Communal/collective European society exists: indicated by EU, this society combats Americanization and furthers Europeanization as an extension of Globalization?

Book review provided following: http://goo.gl/Yyt4D

This book is divided into three distinctive parts. The first two analyze the state of the as it relates to the Europeanization of identities and public spheres... Part three considers the extent of which the Europeanization of identities and public spheres actually impacts and matters for the political operations of the Union. 

Arguing that a European public sphere exists, Risse notes the contentious limits of that sphere, noting that the possibility exists for the European public sphere to expand further or retract in a manner that could have negative consequences for European communities.

Asserts that there is an irrefutable emergence of transnational European communities of communication, "through the interconnectedness of Europeanized public spheres" (5)

There is a struggle over describing the Europeanization of identities and public spheres and the explanation of such processes and phenomena. [Sic] these issues associated with the Europeanization of identities are 
of great importance to the political life of the EU.

increased attention should be given to the role that Eastern European nations have played and what role they will continue to play in the conceptualization of European identity and community.After all, it is the inclusion and blending of communities traditionally seen as "other" that has impacted the project of European integration and identity building to one of the most considerable degrees.

EU Policy Brief on establshing coherent communication strategy to engage citizens and mobilize their support: ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/ssh/docs/emediate-bursi_en.pdf

It was particularly the second of the post-Habermasian approaches [[relate the evident crisis of the (national) public sphere(s) to the growth of global tendencies rooted in the emergent transnationalization of media production and reception (Fraser, 2003).]] that influenced the debates on the European Public Sphere (henceforth EPS) which were initiated when the public sphere-oriented academic disputes reached Europe and became tied to the then-ongoing (predominantly normative, political-scientific) debates about the crisis of the European Union as a democratic, supranational constellation.

The academic debates on EPS, however, were, if not results of, then at
least parallel to the new discussions on the public sphere in political discourses at the supranational level. The European Commission's White Paper on European Governance (2001) already pointed to a 'widening gulf between the [EU] and the people it serves' (see also Wodak and Wright, 2006, 2007).

The problems arising from the 'closeness deficit' between the EU and
its citizens underline the fact that the bloc can no longer derive legitimacy solely from its ability to improve trade and complete the internal market: 'Its legitimacy today depends on involvement and participation', and thus 'the linear model of dispensing policies from above must be replaced by a virtuous circle, based on feedback, networks and involvement from policy creation to implementation at all levels' (ibid.: 11).

The proposals in the White Paper are thus underpinned by five principles of good governance - openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence - which are said to reinforce two further basic principles: proportionality and subsidiarity.

the White Paper on European Communication Policy goes further and devotes a whole section of its Part I to the explicit clarification of why and how to construct the EPS. As suggested in that section: 
"[M]any of the policy decisions that affect daily life for people in the EU are taken at European level. People feel remote from these decisions, the decision-making process and EU institutions. There is a sense of alienation from 'Brussels', which partly mirrors the disenchantment with politics in general. One reason for this is the inadequate development of a 'European public sphere' where the European debate can unfold. (European Commission, 2006a: 4)"

Moreover, we learn from the White Paper on European Communication Policy that the EPS should occur at a national rather than supranational or international levels. Based on the premise that 'people learn about politics and political issues largely through their national education systems and via their national, regional and local media' (ibid.), a proposal is hence put forward that constructing the EPS necessitates that Europe 'needs to find its place in the existing national, regional and local "public spheres" and the public discussion across member states must be deepened' (ibid., p. 5).

However, as it later becomes clear, what the European Commission has in mind in its White Paper is what could be defined as a (rather questionable) 'deficiency-model of an EPS'. The latter should be constructed by adding a European dimension to the national debates and, by highlighting deficiencies in national governance, should foreground the advantages of EU policies; 'that is why national
public authorities, civil society, and the European Union institutions need to work together to develop Europe's place in the public sphere' (ibid.)

AIMS:
The book illustrates how various disruptive moments in the history of Europe after 1945 (i.e. various 'crisis events', see below) caused a differentiated representation and negotiation of 'Europe' and Europe oriented notions (e.g. 'European values', 'European identity' and the like) in the domestic public spheres of several European countries

we define the EPS as a transnational arena of communication where social, political, institutional, cultural and economic actors voice their opinions and ideas which are then discussed, distributed and negotiated with reference to different (crucial) events. Such a transnational public sphere is European in three distinct and interrelated ways. It is European from a geographical perspective, defining Europe as the geographical area between the Atlantic and the Urals, the North Sea and the Mediterranean. It is European from the point of view of intellectual traditions in that it bears within it ideas and conceptions of European history, culture and modernity (see Stråth, 2000a, 2000c). And thirdly it is European in that it is a common arena where the existence, shape and scope of Europe and Europeanness, European unity or conflict, similarity or diversity, are discussed and contested.

Within our conception of the EPS, we ascribe a unique role to the (national) media as the keycarriersof the ongoing negotiations of different ideas and different actors' standpoints.

During crises, perceptions and definitions of political objects of reference (such as Europe or the nation-state) are contested, negotiated, reformulated and reorganized

In our view, the construction and functions of an EPS involve a continuous interaction and intertwining between different (nationally and transnationally incepted) ideas/viewpoints and various ethical notions, that are central to the negotiation and legitimation of different forms of (collective) identities.

A transnational, and for that matter trans-cultural, EPS thus requires shared debates questioning certain values. In order to investigate and assess this feature of the EPS, we explore whether and how Europe is debated in national media as an ethically charged notion and also whether and how national ethics and values have been explicitly Europeanized or domesticated (i.e. reappropriated/recontextualized for specifically national purposes), during selected crisis events. We claim that moments/events of crisis are crucial for the ethically based negotiation of Europe and/or the nation(-state). It is within these crises that values are sometimes violated (e.g. values of freedom, or human rights) while different actors also use those crises to express (in/through the media) their defence of other values (e.g. democracy, social justice or peace) with a view to legitimizing their ideas about the existing social, political and economic order

Argues Public Sphere doesn't exist; Fragmentation of both media and national influences inhibit its creation

2010: Sociology

This article is a contribution to the debate on European identity... 
It shows that whereas the official narrative may be reducible to a simplistic model of nested identities, from local to European, actors who have become familiar with it use their 'European identity' in more complex ways, displacing binary cultural and spatial logics - unity vs. diversity, places vs. flows - that still mostly inform theories of identity.

2011: Intl. Communication Gazette